Thrice Again
Scurlock is recovered from the Dimmer Sisters thanks to a team-up of the Nameless and Casta. Complications arise when some new law enforcement arrives on the scene. Claire Strangford has an unfortunate experience at Makeout Mine.
“-would be irresponsible-“
“-Containment would be-“
“-Blighter, my lady-“
“-LUGOS NO-“
Welcome Back
Casta the bounty hunter sits out on a Dockside rooftop, sipping gingerly on a flask of something. There’s the sound of bedlam and chaos on the streets below, but this is unsurprising.
There’s a fresh corpse lying next to her, but this is also unsurprising.
“So . . . I think they know,” she eventually sighs, seemingly to nobody.
There’s a bang, as a police crackdown escalates to gunfire (again, absolutely unsurprising).
“Or, ya know, they suspect. Or somethin’. Kinda had to break cover a little.”
Screams below, and things begin to break in loud and spectacular fashion.
“Yeah, I mean, you gettin’ dropped off with th’ Dimmer Sisters? Really fucked the dog on that. Hadta get yer Nameless on the job ta even get in. Sneak past some changelings, some Shadow Witches . . . Yer pet tinkerer killed a fuckin’ Dimmer Sister, so that’ll go over like fuckin’ fireworks in dry grass. Oh, an’ that Callus shit went an’ beat the fuck out of some skinchangers. NEVER gonna hear the end of that, I bet.”
She pauses for a moment and takes another sip. When she speaks next, it’s in a kind of conspiratorial whisper.
“Mah fuckin’ . . . y’know, GIRLfriend aced that asshole Mercy though. That was pretty sweet.” Another pause, punctuated by gunshots.
“They still got Viktoria whatsherfuck down there, by the way. Ghost-mode. She covered for us when the Shadow Witches came lookin’. Could be an asset. Cram her inta Arkin an’ ya got yerself a turducken of crazy science bullshit.”
She sighs and gets up, stretching out a little. Behind her, the corpse sits up abruptly. She turns around to see it, seemingly unbothered.
“‘eyyy . . . there’s my guy.”
“Indeed,” replies Scurlock, rising in a single fluid motion. Behind the corpse’s impoverished and gaunt aspect, his eyes glimmer with satisfaction, “Here I am. Thrice and thrice and thrice again . . . here I am.”
“What’s the play, chief?” asks Casta, pocketing the hip flask.
Scurlock looks down, basking in the burning warehouse that is the result of peacekeeping Bluecoats.
“Well, revenge, of course. Those idiotic cultists would be first in line for that. Lugos . . . he’s a slave to Viktoria Karhowl’s programming for now. I suppose decapitating him might be useful in the long run and cathartic in the short term . . . Yes, that would be best. But first . . .”
He examines the corpse he’s wearing, and a sneer forms on his borrowed face.
”. . . first, I think I need to change into something befitting my station.”
On The Case
Somewhere in Coalridge
Nat Marseilles took a drag of the hand-rolled cigarette as she surveyed the collage of red string, words, and images that her colleagues had assembled. To anyone else, it’d look like a madman’s scrapbook gone hinkey. Hell, she could barely parse it herself. But dammit, there was a fine line between genius and madness, and her partner Chuck Morgenstern rode that line like a toddler riding a Skovlan goose.
“Arright . . . Walk me through it.”
Chuck skittered into her eyeline, pointer in hand. As he spoke, he tapped at different sections of the wall, pointing out relevant words.
“Yeah, so aaaaah here’s what it is: so Strangford died MONTHS ago. MONTHS! Crossbow bolt through the throat. BUT! Strangford’s ghost doesn’t show, ‘cuz our killer’s a GOD. Damn. PROFESSIONAL, right? Takes his ghost, stashes it-“
“But NOT with the Dimmer Sisters, even though almost every assassin in the city goes to them to make a ghost disappear. Gives it to the vampire they make . . .”
“RIGHT! Trusts them. Pre-existing relationship. Welcome to your new meat carriage, here’s the old driver in a jar.”
“And the ambush that kills him?”
“AUGH. It’s a whole mess. We’ve got SAILORS, we’ve got EX-COPS, we’ve got WITCHES, we’ve got WRESTLERS-“
“That Shmeek kid and Red Hot whatshisname, right. So, probably the Nameless, right? Which’d make our killer . . . Castaaaa . . .”
“No last name. Like a singer.”
“Ahh, that’s fun. So, given it’s a vampire that Casta trusts and the Nameless enable, that’d mean . . .”
“Clearly,” interjected Jesus, his monocle glinting in the guttering light, “Strangford’s body was being piloted by that GHASTLY Lord Scurlock all of this time.”
“‘Eyyy, thanks Jay. So what happens next?”
Chuck took the hand-rolled cigarette off Nat and took a hard drag. Jesus nodded approvingly at this, for though He abstained from such things, He would not deny His friends the pleasures of a few comparatively minor sins. What else was life for?
“So, months go by. Scurlock, he’s busy. Runs the Strangford empire, keeps to the council, shits the bed as a husband and father-“
“Right, perfect impression of Strangford.”
“Yes, but then! Then, my friends, Scurlock tries his hand at a game too sharp even for him! Something goes terribly wrong, the vampire is banished, the body ends up in a canal, and the SOUL ends up in the possession of the Dimmer Sisters!”
“Yeaaah, and that’s where our boy big V comes in!”
Chuck shot some finger guns at Veldren the psychonaut, who narrowly avoided the deadly projectiles. Nat shook her head at this, but said nothing. She knew it would only lead to Chuck ranting about his rights to his arms.
“Yeah, Veldren grabs the soul and brings it our way. We get to talking, start investigating Casta and the Nameless. They hear about it from . . . Jeren, I’d guess. Little ratfuck, that guy. Glad I spiked his peptic acid with laxitives.”
Jesus got a hearty chuckle out of this, but Bonkey Bill (the large anthropomorphic frog, frequent companion to Veldren) merely shook his head from his cloudy perch in the corner. Bonkey Bill was no friend to the police, and he knew the pains of an upset stomach all too well.
“Right, so the Nameless go after us. They lure YOU to the mines while you chase down the kids, fuckin’ . . . You know, the Strangford girl, her boyfriend, that weird kid . . .”
“He’s called the Shmeek. Don’t ask, I don’t know.”
“As it happens, it is a word of Aramaic derivation-“ Jesus began, before everyone booed and began throwing Iruvian takeout at Him.
“ANYway, you get in there, cosh one of ‘em, save the boyfriend, but then SURPRISE! The Strangford girl got possessed by a MEGA-GHOST-“
“Old Wickhamm. Or Young Hamwick. Bad news, either way. Knows Scurlock, profited by his disappearance but didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Right, and she kicks YOUR ass, no offense-“
“Yeah, sure, none taken . . . Asshole . . .”
“I’m just sayin’, I don’t care what flavor of ghost, step to ME and it’s a piss jar to the face-“
“PLEASE, friends! Must we profane and blaspheme on the day of my nativity?”
“FUCK you, it was a midwinter festival and we ALL KNOW IT-“
“Whatever. Point is, Wickhamm knocks you out and goes berserk, the Nameless exorcise it, and you escape in the chaos-“
“Yeah, whoever tied me up was no sailor. Point is, they’ve got me out of the way, so they can go after you while you’re working on Strangford’s body in the morgue. They go through my coat, find the receipts for Brannigan’s, get 20 orders of the whelk soup. They show up, start a soup riot-“
“Brannigan’s is worth it. I’d punch my grandmother in the face for a quart.”
“I know you would, pal. You come out, someone tries to nab your spirit charm, you catch them, they dose you, and THEN they steal Strangford’s soul but make us think they just broke the jar and let him loose. They bust your evidence wall, screw up our investigation, and get the heat off of them so we have no idea WHO killed Strangford or WHAT was happening. That about cover it?”
“ExACTly! But THEY didn’t count on our boy big V giving us his good stuff!”
Veldren shifted uncomfortably at this. He’d chosen to omit the fact that the clairvoyance of his drugs would wear off in 3 hours, taking all preternatural deductions and conclusions with it. The two would wake up incredibly dehydrated and with no conscious memory of any of their insights. Such was the blessing and the curse of his peerless psychonautic expertise.
“Right!” Nat clapped her hands brightly, “So, all we gotta do is, we sober up, clean up, write this all in a report, and BANG, we’re back to the capital and the Nameless get got by the Emperor’s finest!”
“HELL yeah! But first, I have this great idea for a musical . . .”